“The City Always Wins: A Novel” by Omar Robert Hamilton— A New Look at the Egyptian Revolution

In 2011, Egypt experienced an uprising in Tahrir Square in Cairo that ushered in a revolution and caused Mariam and Khalil to move through Cairo’s streets and political underground. Their were swept up in the revolution and were consumed with purpose. The world was watching Egypt and their city as the country began to move toward an unknown future. They believe that this revolution is a new kind of revolution and that they are players in the making of a new age.

Battles raged day and night against the Egyptian police force and many began to feel the emotions of

Post-revolutionary exile even before the revolution actually began., Omar Robert Hamilton gives us a psychological look at the beginning twenty-first century Egypt. While this is a novel about the revolution is also about the global generation that tried to change the world.

Here is the revolution from inside the revolutionaries and as much as it wanted to succeed, it did not. This is a look at a generation that could just about see a new world and of a revolution betrayed. We read about the popular movement that we all saw from the outside and we feel its passion and the details are vivid and unforgettable. The book captures the uprising that was fueled by the Internet and broken by the reality of what took place. What we really see that it was love that brought about the revolution and gave it its power.

Hamilton takes us behind the scenes and we cross borders and generations as he read. We are crushed by the failure as were the revolutionaries and the questions that they get from those that died as a result.

What caused the uproar was the struggle with despotism. We clearly become aware of “violence and inequality, grief and loss, how politics is for many today a way to live and die.”